Hi! Well, it's a busy week so far for me. I'd like to take the time to talk about how some things are going to be changing overall with my games, or why I have the current ones in place.
1. Manuals - [Change]
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| TRG - Demo H2P Menu |
In the past I've made how to play menus for my games which have every little detail in them. This is most true with Tilly's Rose Garden games. But with the creation of the Blox demo I've come to terms that making manuals are much more ideal for the players. They'd rather look at an organized PDF than click around in complicated menus to find out something. Plus you can go right to what you
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| TRG - Points Sub Menu |
want with the PDF instead of getting out of the game to look for a proper menu.
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| Blox Demo Manual |
My Manuals will have all the things that are needed to make your game experience more pleasant, like points, what the enemies do and gameplay for the player themselves. Along with technical things like programs I used to create the game and proper credits for music and such. I was proud of the manual I created for Blox and it just feels that this would be a better option for the players.
Of course how to play the game will have a menu still for how to move the player and the basic object of the game, but there will be a button for the manual to open in your browser and you'll be provided the PDF file as well. - Possibly in Tilly's Rose Garden's case I'll do both, I'm not totally sure but that sounds like a good compromise.
2. No Re-releasing old games. - [Current Status]
As of now I'm not going to "debug" old games, they are what they are.
My reason for that is that each game marks my progress as a game creator, and the bugs show how I was at that point of my learned capability. - I might in the future but right now I can say for sure that I am not. - I know for sure demos are not going to be debugged. The simple reason why they get full discrimination is because they are in fact demos, they're not supposed to be as perfect as a completed game. I of course polish the best I know how but overall there will not be the same perfection that a full game will have, new knowledge and better work flow will change everything.
3. Not staying in a box for how games are played - [Change]
This is more or less applied to Tilly's Rose Garden, since this has had the most attention overall from me. The simple fact is, every version has been pretty similar in nature. The version I'm working on right now will not be this way, there will be at the very least some foundational differences. The general gameplay will be the same, but there will be some very different approaches.
The main change for Tilly's Rose Garden I'll talk about in this post (New post about the new changes coming VERY soon!) is you will not live for all of infinity and be able to pick up infinite points by picking everything up and dying to get more points, that option will be gone. It will be more strict than the other versions of the game. This is a very big step but I think it will up the challenge and make the game more fun than just a you can't lose and will gain if you do lose.
4. Sequels - [Just Yes!]
I am going to be a person who makes sequels to games. I know right now that I will be making soon a sequel to Fluffertini's Pizza Constructor! It will have the same general gameplay but will have mor
e options, less buggy drag and drop and be faster.
5. New Frame Rate - [Change]
Before Blox every game has been 30fps, but Blox has broken another barrier and is 60fps speed. This is a change that I will keep, because all my games will have smoother gameplay and be more enjoyable to play. This will mean I have to do more math than I previously wanted but hey, math is healthy for the brain anyway!
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I hope this has been interesting!
Thank you for reading and please don't forget to +1 on Google and check out my
latest game release!
~ God Bless ~
~ Firefly
The first thing I'd say before you animate anything is, you need
an idea of what you want and what it will look like (generally). This
comes from sketching out your idea frame by frame, preferably ( at
least how I do it) side by side on one piece of paper, sorta like a
story board...I do this and make notes about what I want in sketch
book for reference. This helps me know what I'm aiming towards, will
you use all the frames? Maybe not. Will you need more frames? Maybe
so, but at least you could point yourself in the right direction.
If at all possible, animate your animated bits separately from the
full object (picture). For example, for all my sprites I used to make
the player object in Tilly's Rose Garden Spring I drew the eyes separate from the face and made a layer from visible for the frame. I
did this because animating the eyes prevented small little errors in
her face (twitching animation from trying to draw on top of a
finished drawing, wiggling animation, inconsistent image). In the
game itself I put Tilly as a background image and just made a sprite
for her eyes and it made her look alive within the main menu. This is
just one example there are other things as well you can animate separate like the mouth or tears just to name two. A lot of the time
this might not be possible but if you have only on area moving the
the basic object never does, try only animating the part that moves
after your base image is complete, for me this works better since I
don't draw every frame, I draw one frame then edit it to what I want
after.
Before you start thinking I just said that in the first tip, what
I'm saying here is not the same thing as sketching out your animation
on paper as a reference. What I'm talking about here is before you
finalize your animation as either a “line-art” animation or a
full color animation sketch out each frame first and test it out to
see if it's smooth or jumps if the size is consistent of your
object(s) you are animating. In my own animations I use the preview
feature in GIMP it's fast going (though you can adjust the speed
slightly) but you can see enough to know whether this animation will
be good or not. It doesn't matter how pretty the colors are, if it's
not smooth it's not going to look as good, so make sure it's smooth
before you color it and in my opinion do not draw one frame at a time
in full then go to the next.
In some cases drawing another frame is pointless since a cycle can
be done using only couple drawn frames. The best example I know of at
this point and time is an eye blink, you only need to draw 3 frames
for it to be believable, you could do more if you want it super
smooth but for things like sprites the less frames the better so you
don't make your game so big...Anyway back on topic here. For an eye
you have frame one which is the opened eye, frame two the eye half
closed and frame three it's closed. Not get the second frame,
duplicate it and put it after the 3rd now your eye closes
and opens.
As some may know, Tilly's Rose Garden has been my primary project. In fact it's the first project I've ever started! It's been ongoing for almost 2 years now, the longest amount of time I've ever put in to a project. Of course there has been gaps in time do to life such as it is, and other smaller projects. Anyways, the reason for this post isn't to bore you to tears so I'm going to get to the point.
In the past if you hit an enemy that restarts the level all the points come-back. That was okay, but it's not really "cheat"proof". Now when you die you will not be able to pick-up all the points again. Bonuses, enemies, and point-drainers will be excluded from this. They will be able to stay even after the room restarts. 
This will be the stuff that nobody "sees" but will make a world of difference. I'm right now learning how to code things and that will make the game work smoother. This though, will slow me down because I'm learning brand new things with this. I'm getting it though, slowly but I'm getting it!
I am going to be a person who makes sequels to games. I know right now that I will be making soon a sequel to Fluffertini's Pizza Constructor! It will have the same general gameplay but will have mor
This also hasn't been touched. I attempted to because I thought I had a good idea but it didn't work. I just want it to be more interactive but I haven't gotten any ideas on how to make it more interactive without the program being overly huge which will happen if I go the route I'm on now with it. Once I figure how I'll do it to be more exciting and not so dull I'll work on this.
Yes I have opened it a few times but I wasn't sure what to do so I closed it just as fast, I know what I want with this game and I hope to make a demo of it in the not so distant future. I know when I worked on it the game felt very fun, I'm just having to get back in to the swing it's too good of an idea for me to never touch again. So I don't know when but I'm going to get to this again, I like it too much.
This was a fully game, so I'm thinking about making a second one, title isn't for sure or anything but I have ideas that would be fun for sure! And I have a file from my game-maker mentor on how to make the drag and drop more stable than for the current release. I'm really planing on making this squeal soon. I wanted to work on it these few past weeks but Blox took over sadly. So we all have to wait longer!
